Maple Walnut Chicken with Boring Canned Green Beans

With the walnuts and the dark meat, you know this is going to be a bit higher calorie than usual, but walnuts are healthy; along with salmon they are one of the foods with the highest positive impact on your bad cholesterol levels. Adding an ounce to your diet here and there is well worth the extra calories and fat grams!

Maple Walnut Chicken:
Ingredients:
1 tblspn Extra Virgin Olive Oil
4 boneless chicken thighs, 4 oz. each, fat trimmed and cut into 1/4" thick slices
Salt and pepper to taste
1/8 c. apple cider vinegar
1/4 c. chicken broth
1/3 c. real maple syrup

Coat a large skillet with 1 tblsn. EVOO
Pat chicken dry and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Add to skillet and cook, stirring and turning occasionally, until cooked. Remove and set aside.
Drain off all fat that has formed
Add the vinegar. Cook and deglaze the pan.
Add chicken broth, maple syrup, additional pepper to taste.
Cook over medium heat until sauce is thickened.
Return the chicken, add the walnuts, fold together. Loosely cover the pan and simmer over low heat for 3-5 minutes.

Tastes delicious served over rice, and in the past I have made a double batch of sauce to ladle over the rice, though that adds quite a few calories, of course.

In this case, I served with a side of canned green beans (my favorite veggie in a can) seasoned lightly with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Spray (Love that stuff!!! FYI, 7 sprays is 1 calorie), and some Johnny's Seasoning Salt that we special order from Washington from time to time. (Full of MSG goodness! XD)

The chicken from this dish is a fantastically simple to prepare dish that will have your company exclaiming over how good it is every single time. I adapted this from the Maple-Walnut Chicken Thighs (bone in, skin on) in Rachel Ray Every Day Oct. 2010. I cut out the skin, butter, and some olive oil to remove fat grams, and reduced the maple syrup (1/3 c. is still plenty! Especially if you use a strongly flavored dark syrup). I used bone out strips to make a smaller portion size seem larger, and to decrease cooking time dramatically.